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I'm surprised this qualifies as a "mini" review (even for AnandTech), but I'm impressed by the graphics performance of the G2 more than anything else. I'm just wondering if there are any applications or games yet that can take advantage on Android.Reply

The graphics benchmarks put the Moto-X in a strong position een though it uses the older cores and newer Adreno 320 gpu. Granted it has only 1280X720 resolution, the overall performance is very close to the S800 with FullHD screens. This actually means that the Moto-X SoC is well optimized for it purposes. It also seems to beat the SGS4 in most graphics tests.Reply

The test was done at 720p - for everyone - which means Moto X is beating most everyone else in GPU performance - at the same resolution. If you take the real world case, and put the others at their native 1080p resolution, then in the real world Moto X will be 2x better in gaming performance since it will push half the pixels.

Also Adreno 320 is not new. Is a year old, just like the S4 Pro CPU cores. Just because S4 and HTC One used the same GPU this year, doesn't mean it's "new".Reply

All the pixel density fad is apple's clever ploy to conceal their small screen. Resolution / size = density, so smaller screen will get higher dpi. However, it is quite obvious that if resolution is the same, larger screen is much easier on eye.Reply

RR3 doesn't render in 1080p on the GS 4, I can clearly see pixelation in the 3D parts. I guess it might be because they're perhaps lazy in utilizing multi-core hardware? Because the game lags considerably when there are a lot of AI cars in front of you.Reply

Maybe loosely "based on". According to the FCC paperwork the Nexus 5 has a display of roughly 4.96 inches to the G2's 5.2 inches. Looking at the pictures the camera is also in a different place on both as well. Not huge differences, mind you, but seems like a lot of work going into making them different if they are indeed based on the same general design.

I would plunk down for a G2 in a heartbeat if LG didn't have such a shoddy support and update record for their phones. I currently own an old G2x and am currently scanning around for it's successor. I'll have to wait to see what the Nexus 5 really turns out to be, I suppose.Reply

Why would you have more heat when pushing less V and A? Yes, it is clocked higher and has a more powerful gpu so its tdp (or whatever) will be higher than s600 soc, but at the same clocks as the pre-800s it should use less power.This shouldn't be a surprise since this is, apparently, the first time snapdragons have used 28nm hpm, and with new processes come inherent advantages (also problems, but heat shouldn't be one of them unless you are running it at full-tilt).Reply

The side by side comparison video is very interesting. I've only have a light understanding of what I'm seeing, and if you get a chance, I'd really love to get your impressions on how each of these OIS/EIS systems perform. The one question that came to me as my eyes darted back and forth tying to compare the two videos, was that the 1020 OIS seemed to work pretty well, right up to the moment of impact on your footfall. I'm I seeing that right? Is this a result of the weight of the larger sensor in the 1020 maxing out the capabilities of the OIS when those large acceleration forces hit it?Reply

Accommodation angle is the big game, and they're all also tuned differently too it seems. I'm not walking very aggressively or stomping around either, but trying to walk normally. I wanted to include the Lumia 920 as well but didn't bring it, the 925 seems to be pretty similar to what I remember the 920 being like though.

It's funny that in my opinion the 1020 (and so also the 808) does one of the worst jobs in OIS, the 925 the best followed by the HTC One and Moto X. Between them is the rest. LG2 on par with the 1020, in some scenes worse, in some better.In the 1020 vs. 925 comparison, at the beginning, Brian walks along a footway, the 1020 video has a very obvious and penetrant periodic shaking/reflex which does not exist in the 925 or HTC One video.At the very beginning of the Moto X comparison we see a handrail with a building behinde it, the Moto X video is sharp and steady, the 1020 video wobbles in the z-directionThe colors in the 1020 are the most vivid ones, but in my opinion also the most over saturated and artifical ones. It does a good job in capturing the blue of the sky, but therefore darker details aren't visible on the 1020 videos. (handrail at the end of the test videos)

It's obvious that using a larger sensor a OIS is harder to implement, but I find it odd that Nokia hasn't made any use of the 41MP in video recording mode by additionally implementing an EIS.

But I found it surprising how good or even better the competition is (or how bad the 1020 in videos is), using a cheaper and less intrusive sensor. (in photos the 1020 will probably (and hopefully) remain unbeaten)Reply

I feel like a broken record: only 32GB onboard storage and no microSD? No thanks. I really, really, really, wish someone other than Samsung would get their heads out of the cloud. It's ok when you're someplace with decent, or any, wireless connectivity. Otherwise, useless.Reply

When I see reviews at Anandtech, often my first thought is 'wow, what a nice phone!'-

Then I see that the SD-card is missing and the phone has died for me.

Samsung seems to be very smart in this area. They always have removable batteries, SD-card support and unlocked bootloaders.

And while Samsung breaks one sales record after another quarter by quarter, LG and HTC are wondering why most customers prefer their competitor's devices.

I don't think that this is coincidence. E.g. I personally like the look and feel of the HTC One, but the lacking flexibility turned me off immediately.

Android games like the Asphalt-series consume about 1.5GB meanwhile. A 16GB phone without SD-card support is a joke meanwhile.

32GB are OK, but still inferiour to an external 64GB SD-card. Once you root your device, you can set mount points to the external SD-card or - in case you are lazy like me - use an app like FolderMount to at least move the apps which are memory-hogs to the external SD.

How much can it cost to support such a feature? LG, HTC etc. are clueless and deserve their low market share with their crippled devices, really.

They should wake up and support SD-cards so we get more competition. But no, instead the champaign flows at Samsung while the managers laugh about the competition.Reply

You're talking as if LG and HTC's low market share is attributable to lack of SD support. It has practically nothing to do with this.You do understand that people requesting SD support are a minority that barely register in sales number?Reply

Most people really don't care about SD-Cards, for some it's even an annoyance because you can't combine the phone storage with the SD-Card storage, so you can't use it for apps and other stuff. And it's much slower than eMMC and another part which can and will fail after extensive usage.Thus a phone with 8GB internal + 64GB SD-Card is almost as worthless as a phone with 8GB only for the !majority of people!The big advantage comes with storing music libraries, movie libraries, ... on the SD-Card, but there again, the majority of users does not have a 64GB music library, and barely DVD/Blu-Ray rips, they rather rely on streaming.Reply

First of all, I already have posted that using the SD-card for apps is child's play after the phone has been rooted. Just root, install FoulderMount and off you go.

Then you can use the SD-card for Music, movies etc., while music probably being the major use-case for most people, as a solt of people use their phone as 'walkman' or use it as music data storage in their cars.

So simply stating that an SD-card does not give you benefits ist BS.

And yes, marketing is an explanation for higher market share. But this alone does not explain why Samsung has ten times the marketshare of its competitors.

Tomi Ahonen called the smartphone market 'Samsung, Apple and the nine dwarfes', which is correct IMO.

A lot of people walk into a store and don't have much clue. Then the sales guy shows them the phones and explains the advantages/ disadvantages.

So, if you are not much interested in the HTC One's speakers, you can also take the SGS4. It has a removable battery and an SD-card slot and costs the same.

Why take the phone with less options? It simply does not make sense - after all, if you never use the SD-card slot it does not matter because you payed no premium for it.

But simply stating that customers are too stupid to properly use SD-cards falls short when Samsung has so much success with phones equipped with such features.Reply

No, they are not too stupid.You are too stupid to understand that not everyone cares about the same things as you do.

The simple fact that you are reading and commenting on this site is clear indication you are part of a tiny minority.You are completely disconnected from the needs and interests of mass market consumers.

The sales guy you mentioned is paid by Samsung to sell more Samsung phones. Almost nobody uses SD cards.Reply

Almost no one uses SD cards? Do you have any fact to base that statement on?

SD cards are not the primary reason people prefer Samsung phones, but they are definitely one of the contributing arguments when people buy phones. Clearly, vanity is not as highly rated in real life as HTC thought. People apparently prefers to spend their money of useful things, not just looks.Reply

Now you come with rooting. I'm a science student and technically interested (as it's obvious because I'm here on this site). I've rooted my smartphone and will do the same to all my future smartphones. It's a no brainer for me. A lot of my friends own an Android smartphone, too. They are in no way stupid. But none of them has a rooted device. I don't know a single one in my surrounding who rooted it. To some I explained them the beneifts, how to do it, etc. But none did it. Why? Because they had no urgent need for it and didn't want to 'waste' time doing it.Some of the smartphones they use have a SD-Card, none of them really cared. None of them heavily uses it.

I'm sorry to burst your ignorant selfish bubble, but not everyone is like you and wants the same you do!

Samsung has the highest marketing expense of possible any company on earth. People who go in a store and want to buy a smartphone, know mostly nothing about the different flavors of smartphones, but they do know, that Samsung has some, lots of them, with nice looking features, according to the ads they see in TV/web/posters just everywhere! The sales person also probably knows the advantages of Samsung devices best, so it's no surprise that most people just buy a Samsung smartphone. The fine differences between the different smartphones are negligible for most people and few even understand them or value them.Few know what OS they are running on, let alone the precise Android version.

You aren't the smartest either, if you think that the only outstanding feature of the HTC One is the dual speakers. There's the aluminum body, OIS, magnitudes brighter display, software features and others left, which you don't care about and thus don't care about.Reply

Are you really saying that you single-handedly just uncovered the reason for HTC, LG, Sony and all the rest's low market share?And here they were scratching their hair completely baffled at just why Samsung handsets were selling so much. Everyone in there market research team should be fired for failing to see that simply adding an SD card slot would immediately result in at least 3.5 million extra sales per quarter.Reply

Hey bud, I agree with you - the SD card expansion is a valuable feature to have. If I was given the choice to have it or not, with absolutely no trade-off, then duh of course I'll want to have the feature.

But I want to share my personal experience so far - my smartphone history up to this point is the HTC Thunderbolt, Rezound and now the One. I loved having the SD card expansion. I rooted and S-off'ed both the Thunderbolt and Rezound (shorting out two contacts on my brand new Rezound in order to get S-off was a damn crazy leap of faith). And I always thought that I wouldn't get a phone without SD card expansion, ever. Period.

But then when I actually looked at my usage pattern - after the initial transfer from the Thunderbolt to Rezound, I never once took out the microSD card again for data transfer. Hell, I actually bought a 64GB card for the Rezound (I jacked the 32GB from the Thunderbolt originally), because the phone actually supported it unofficially (the card capacity didn't exist when the phone was first out!). But you know what... the 64GB card never made it into the phone. It's now in my Nikon SLR.

And dude trust me, I put that extra storage space to good use. Talking about multiple NAND backups, my music library, a movie or two, photos, Titanium app backups, the works. But that's just it - what I need, and I suspect most people need, isn't the microSD expansion per se. We need SPACE! As long as there's enough space to fit your need, who cares if it's microSD, internal, or even cloud? Okay, cloud might be iffy with security and extra power draw from data connection, not to mention data cap (not for me though, unlimited data hehe). Look at it from another perspective - if your phone came with 128GB of internal space, would you be able to do without microSD expansion?

And as you might know, the way Android handles external SD space isn't very elegant. You have to keep track of the system partition, the internal SD, and the external SD. It sounds trivial, but it's not elegant and gets more annoying as you go forward. At least for me. I honestly can't see the majority of the public dealing with this and feeling happy about it.

Marketing is everything, unfortunately. I think we've reached a point in the smartphone market where most phones are ADEQUATE. They'll do the job of calls, internet, chat, camera, etc. Marketing is the key to making people want to buy your product. Samsung is great at it. Apple is great at it. HTC and the rest, not so much.

Did you know that Samsung went as far as to hire poor college and grad students to post negative comments about competitor phones on major tech review forums and sites? Look it up - they admitted to it, and blamed it on some "rogue individuals" within the company. No... they were sorry they got caught.Reply

Yes expandable storage is so old school - apple will soon make macbooks with soldered on SSDs, cameras with only internal memory, and so on. In fact they are already doing that (rMBP's RAM is soldered and SSD is proprietary format)Reply

You are making a point which, given our data, is impossible to prove/disprove.They are saying, I think, that they don't believe MOST people care about having a removable sdcard. Given that iphones sell so well, I'd think that there are very large groups for which this is true (roughly a third of smartphone owners worldwide). Samsung offers removable storage, but so have the other manufacturers (like sony) yet it hasn't/isn't helping them.Reply

The people who are generally knowledgeable about phones are the ones recommending Samsung Galaxy S3/S4 to their friends. Partially because of the extra features like removable/customizable battery and storage. These features always get a mention in reviews also. You're a fool if you think they're not a factor in Samsung's success.

Right now in my S4 I have the capability to add a 64gb microsd card purely for movies and TV shows and crap like that. That would cost me $50, whereas an additional device like an iPod touch would cost me a lot more. I'd rather just turn my phone into my iPod, but I just CANNOT do that if I have to constantly worry about my onboard space.

Dude!a) How many HTC phones have you owned?b) Do you know how many software updates HTC does for its "premium" phones in its life cycle?c) Have you seen the quality of the software releases for 1-2 yr old phones? Battery life/random restarts etc....Reply

I agree with BabelHuber. No micro/SD = no sale. Talk all you want about how "most of us are streaming from the cloud" or "internal memory is lots faster" - but that means nothing to me. I *DO* want to watch and listen to media and I *DO* want to move it on and off the device quickly. Like when I grab the thing for a trip. Micro/SD lets me do this and works GREAT. You stream; I'll snap.

Micro/SD is worth $$ to me. Conversely, I'm not going to spend $$$$ on a device like this without it. As Babel says: why take the phone with less options? It simply does not make sense.Reply

Yet people happily take the iphone with less options time and time again. apple market their harware properly, and the lack of options becomes irrelevant.

The lack of an SD card will certainly cause a loss of sales from a certain market, but it is a minimal loss of sales in the grand scheme of things. Rather like imagining the loss of sales from people who won't buy this phone because it's not available in pink. It's a non-event.

As has been said, the majority of people care about total space, not removable storage. you can not put an accurate number on the ratio, but to try and argue it is otherwise is silly. The majority want to be able to take photos, record videos, dowload music and shows, not root around in their handbag or pocket or draw for the correct SD card that has their scrubs episodes on it. Average joe wants simplicity. they want to be able to press the screen and access their content. Not start swapping cards in and out. Reply

Yes, the power of branding is incredible. The words Samsung and Galaxy are pounded into the social consciousness to the point that they're now synonymous with Android (like Moto/VZW's Droid campaign early on). It's a very very strong effect.Reply

I don't think sporting removable media and batteries is even amongst the top three reasons why Samsung outsells everyone... I think to imply so seems a bit near sighted. Samsung started dominating long before most manufacturers moved to sealed batteries etc, you can trace their upward track pretty closely to how much more they invested in branding with each successive generation (much to the carrier's chagrin, if it were up to them we'd still have five different Galaxy variations every year).

Personally I could care less for removable media and batteries, but I do appreciate and applaud the fact that Samsung still offers that choice... I think it's one of the advantages of the Android ecosystem. I don't think the majority of the market cares about this tho.Reply

As someone who'd be moving from a Note 2 with 16GB internal and 64GB Micro SD, I think I'd actually appreciate the smaller unified space. It'd be a bit more of a pinch, but the fact is that after several re-formats and changes of software I'm getting sick to the back teeth of different builds treating my SD card differently (no exFAT support in CM10 is a real killer) and having to re-create links from my in-built storage to the external for apps like Google Play Music.

The fact is that external removable storage is a pig to set up and maintain. It could work so much better than it does, but Google don't want to maintain it and I think the point where it's worth letting go has now arrived.Reply

I've got an EVO LTE but I'm on a similar boat, furthermore, this is the first tine in three years where I'm just not in a hurry to upgrade. Going to dual cores and 1GB of RAM was huge (EVO to EVO 3D), going from qHD to 720p and a much thinner device last year was also huge (not to mention ICS/JB)... Right now there's no hugely compelling hardware/software reason urging me to upgrade tho. I still might if this comes out as a Nexus 5 for $350 tho...Reply

"LG has made audio in the line-out sense a priority for the G2. We’ve seen a lot of emphasis from other OEMs on speaker quality and stereo sound, with the G2 LG has put time into rewriting part of the ALSA stack and Android framework to support higher sampling and bit depth. The inability of the Android platform to support different sampling rates for different applications remains a big limitation for OEMs, one LG wrote around, and with the G2 up to 24 bit 192 kHz FLAC/WAV playback is supported in the stock player, and LG says it will make an API available for other apps to take advantage of this higher definition audio support to foster a better 24-bit ecosystem on Android.

"I asked about what codec the G2 uses, and it turns out this is the latest Qualcomm WCD part, which I believe is WCD9320 for the MSM8974 platform. LG says that although the previous WCD9310 device had limitations, the WCD9320 platform offers considerably better audio performance and quality that enables them to expose these higher quality modes and get good output. The entire audio chain (software, hardware codec, and headphone amplifier) have been optimized for good quality and support for these higher bit depths, I’m told. I didn’t get a chance to listen to line out audio, but hopefully in testing this emphasis will play itself out."Reply

Why are the iPhone raw triangle/fill rate tests so much better than any other phone, yet does it perform middle of the pack in gfxbench and such? I was under the impression that they basically had the best graphics solution around, paired with awesomely optimized software.Reply

The meaningless synthetic benchmarks always favored iOS. The reason many people think that iPhones are magnitudes more powerful than Android devices.The only meaningful benchmarks are normal 3D scenes.I don't understand why Anandtech still posts those meaningless benchmarks. Or can you read something out of them? NO! They are in no way a measurement for performance. They are basically useless. That's the reason we don't see them on desktop GPU comparisons.Reply

They give you a good idea of the device's capabilities in specific areas. Useful for doing a deep dive to determine what the make-up of the device is.For realworld use, you are absolutely right, and, imho, such synthetics only belong in articles where there are new components (like this one), but for the next snapdragon-800, I don't think those particular benchmarks need be run..Reply

It's interesting that the G2 either slightly over-exposes most situations, or the dynamic range is tighter than on the S4 Octa's Exmor RS and or the Lumia 1020, this applies to photos and videos alike. Otherwise I'm highly impressed with the camera performance, very natural, even slightly under-saturated results like the S4 Octa (which in the 808 comparison shows that it's everybody else over-saturating), I'd only set half a step lower exposition correction and let everything else done by the device.

Brian, what is the maximum exposure time you could get automatically or manually off a single shot? What is the highest ISO value?Reply

This actually bodes *very* well for the Nexus 5, as it also packs a Snapdragon 800 chipset.

It's not too much of a stretch to expect better battery life than the Nexus 4, which was already decent. Plus, there's a good chance of an upside surprise, if it also packs the panel self-refresh and gets gains from Android 4.4.Reply

Great to see those battery efficiency improvements from Qualcomm. You'd following the right path here, Qualcomm. Please don't change.

Nvidia is stupid for following the "pure performance" path. That strategy has lost them most customers, especially since they followed that strategy to the point where they were making only "tablet chips", which is code-word for "our chips aren't efficient enough for smartphones".

I've said it before, chip makers should think about making "smartphone chips" first and foremost, and THEN, use the same chips, maybe with a little extra clock speed in tablets, too. If think think about making "tablet chips", they will blow it, because they will make the chip too inefficient and won't be able to "downscale" as easily to put it in smartphones.

So yeah, Qualcomm please continue doing your own thing. If Nvidia, Samsung and others keep following the "performance/benchmark" path, then the joke is on them, and will ultimately fail (as they have so far, and it's most devices are using Qualcomm's chips). I do hope they wake up to it sooner rather than later though, because I don't want Qualcomm to become another monopolistic Intel.Reply

Qualcomm is the only Android SoC producer which does design their own cores and does not rely on ARM finished CPU designs.

If you take a close look, you'll see that the Tegra 4 and the Exyons 5 are the only A15 processors at the moment, and it probably took much longer for ARM to release them and for NVIDIA and Samsung to finalize them than expected. They also had no other option than A15 to get some improvement over A9 and to remain competive with future Qualcomm SoCs.

Qualcomm on the other hand was able to release minor updates the whole time, so processors between A9 and A15.Samsung will do the same next year, so expect some larger competition to Qualcomm.Qualcomm also has the big radio advantage, which NVIDIA adressed with the i500 and which might make them competive to Qualcomm next year again.

Neither Samsung nor NVIDIA followed a performance strategy only. They had no other choice than using A15, and Tegra, as always used their 4+1, Samsung had to use big.LITTLE to make A15 usable in a smartphone. But big.LITTLE wasn't fully ready yet, so they had no other choice than using an octa-core setup.

And also remember that MIPS (a competive contender to ARM, but so far mostly used in low end applications) got bought up by Imagination Technologies, which I strongly believe will try everything they can to push MIPS in the high end sector.

So I think it's safe to assume that there won't be a monopoly, Qualcomm just had a big advantage for one year because of the A9 to A15 gap and by offering integrated radios. Both Samsung and NVIDIA learned from this, and a new competitior to ARM is coming up, too.So it will get really interesting.Reply

Cortex A9 was great efficiency wise, and better perf/Watt than what Qualcomm had available at the time (S3 Scorpion), but Nvidia still blew it with Tegra 3. So no, that's not the only reason. Nvidia can do certain things like moving to smaller node or keeping the clock speed low of the GPU's, but adding more GPU cores, and so on, to increase efficiency and performance/Watt. But they aren't doing any of that.Reply

You mean they could and should have released more iterations of Tegra 3 and adding more and more GPUs to improve at least the graphics performance than waiting for A15 and Tegra 4.

I never designed a SoC myself :-D so I don't know how hard it is but I did lots of PCB which is practically the same except on a much larger scale :-D If you add some parts you have to increase the die size, thus move other parts on the die around, reroute the stuff etc. So it's still a lot of work. The main bottleneck of Tegra 3 is memory bandwidth. So adding more GPU cores without adressing the memory bandwidth would not have made any sense most probably.

They probably expected to ship Tegra 4 SoCs sooner, thus they saw no need in releasing a totally improved Tegra 3 and focused on Tegra 4.

And if you compare Tegra 4 to Tegra 3, then they did exactly what you wanted, moving to a smaller node, increasing the number of GPU cores, moving to A15 while maintaining the power efficient companion core, increasing bandwidth, ...Reply

I wonder whether it is more expensive to pay to license ARM's A9, A15, etc (thought they were doing an A12 as well?) or to develop it yourself like Qualcomm does. Obviously QCOM isn't starting from scratch every time, but R&D adds up fast.

This isn't a perfect analogy at all but it makes me think of the difference between being a pharmaceutical company that develops your own products and one that makes generic versions of products someone else has already developed once the patent expires. Of course now in the US many companies that technically make their own products from scratch really just take a compound already invented and tweak it a little bit (isolate the one useful isomer, make the chiral version, etc), knowing that it is likely their modified version will be safe and effective just as the existing drug hopefully is. They still get their patent, which they can extend through various manipulations like testing in new populations right before the patent expires, but the R&D costs are much lower. Consumers therefore get many similar versions of drugs that rely on one mechanism of action (see all the SSRIs) and few other choices if that mechanism does not work for them. Not sure how I got off into that but it is something I care about and now maybe some Anandtech readers will know haha.Reply

My first comment on AnandtechThe review was cool...I'm impressed by g2 battery life n camera...Wish Anandtech can have a UI sectionAlso can you ppl confirm if lg will support g2 with Atleast 2 yrs of software updateThat's gonna be deciding factor in choosing between g2 or nexus 5 for most of us !!!!!!!Reply

Absolutely nobody can guarantee that, even if an LG exec came out and said so there's no guarantee they wouldn't change their mind or a carrier wouldn't delay/block an update... If updates are that important to you, then get a Nexus, end of story.Reply

The "AB" version clocks the CPU at 2.3Ghz, while the standard version tops out at 2.2Ghz.. However you noted in your review that the GPU is clocked at 450Mhz.. If I recall correctly, the "AB" version runs the GPU at 550Mhz.. while the standard is 450Mhz

So in this case the CPU points to one bin.. but the GPU points to another.. Can you please confirm?Nice "Mini Review" otherwise.. Am looking forward to the full review soon.. Please include the throttling analysis like the one from the MotoX. It would be nice to see how the long the clocks stay at 2.3Ghz :)Reply

Brian could you comment on how the lumia 1020 compares to a cheap ($150-200) camera as I was impressed by the difference in colour for the video comparison even if ois wasn't the best.

I currently have a note 2 but the camera quality in low light conditions is just too bad, also the inability to move apps to my memory card has been annoying. I have an upgrade coming up in January I think, but I might try to change phone before. I was wondering whether you could comment on whether the lumia 1020 is worth the jump from android due to picture quality or will an htc one or nexus 5 (if similar to the g2) suffice? I was considering the note 3 as I like everything else but it still doesn't have ois or would the note 3 with a cheap compact be better even given the inconvenience of having to bring a camera?

The main day to day use of my phone is news apps, Internet, email some threaded (which I hear is a problem for windows phone).Reply

I was considering the qx100 but the price is out of my range as I don't take enough photographs to spend that much, am considering the qx10 though at that price point I wonder if a canon 240hs would suffice.Reply

"Gone are the days of 1.4V to hit near-2GHz frequencies it seems, instead 8974 will hit 2.3 GHz at around 1V"

About fuggin time - my 2006 vintage 65 nm Core2 runs at 2.13 GHz at less than 1.1V. I was under the impression that smaller lithography process allows for lower voltages so they should have been well under 0.9V for 2 GHz by now.Reply

You are comparing a platform with 3 discrete chips instead of one, and way more high voltage IO interfaces. Try a modern x86 SoC: Haswell ULT, Bay Trail, or Clover trail for a more fair comparison for idle power.

His point was top clock speed vs. voltage. A completely different topic.Reply

From what I've read, it's becoming very hard to use the same litography process at smaller nodes, and they need to move to a new litography technology (ultraviolet litography, I think), but that's years away from being ready, too, and might not be until 14nm or even 10nm.Reply

I would just like to comment that articles like this are one of the reasons Anandtech will continue to get my traffic long into the future. Brian's "mini-review" is head and shoulders above any "full" review I come across on most tech review sites. Anandtech is never ever first to print, at least on phones, but when it comes to properly informing my purchasing decisions, nothing comes else comes close. Keep up the good work. Reply

Funny fact is the domestic version of G2 supports both microSD and switchable battery (albeit slight smaller). Obviously US customers are too tamed to apple devices and they won't need such features.Reply

I am usually critical of AT's smartphone coverage but for this one I have nothing much to fault for. Thank you for thorough review. oh and I don't think 3D Mark is a legitimate benchmark. I think AT can do away with it.Reply

In addition to some of the headphone jack and audio performance someone asked about, a note on speakerphone volume would be nice. I don't think the review even mentioned where it's located (though I'm guessing it's on the bottom edge from the pics I remember glancing at, I wish there wasn't so much click thru required to browse those on mobile btw).Reply

Yes this is a mini review but the battery life benches are pointless. Obviously with a 3Ah battery the Web Browsing result and talk time are very good, considering that the soc is mostly idle or at low clock speeds. No mention about battery life under gaming or other serious usages...this is a pity because the worst defect of these superphones is the very low battery life under stress.I think that Anandtech must to discover the bad side of a device, not only show the points in favor. I have the suspect LG has made an agreement with this web site.Anyway a so power hungry Soc in a phone is a nonsense that can give many reliability issues to the customers.Bad review this time, so sorry Reply

That's a good point. I guess the only one that comes close to "real world usage" is the browsing one. Even the video one is not that accurate since it will mainly use the GPU or video accelerator, and you're not going to do video on your phone all the time anyway.Reply

Still does not it support OTG? Don't know why it disables power supply for OTG in some module of smartphone like Nexus 4, LG G. If it enable power supply, then can easily extend storage with this mini reader: http://goo.gl/U6IyYReply

I have been an avid reader of Anandtech for a few years. There's one thing I don't like about your Android smartphone coverage this year... and it's that the Sony Xperia line is missing.

Please give some attention to Sony Xperia 2013 smartphones. Their lineup this year has been strong. They have TWO Snapdragon 800 devices out now. The Xperia Z1 alone is worthy of an article. Thanks.Reply

I just bought an LG G2 this afternoon. So far I absolutely love it. I played with the Galaxy Note 2, the Galaxy S4, and the HTC One. All were great devices, but I ultimately canceled my preorder of the Note 3 (it's just too big, and the stylus really isn't that crucial), and went with the G2.

Coming from an iPhone 4S, the speed improvement is decent, and the overall increase in capability is stunning. The ability to have multiple windows open and to resize them like on a desktop is amazing and insanely useful.Reply